Building the cooling roads with high thermal conductivity pavements to relieve urban heat island effect

This study aims to propose a new highly thermally conductive pavement (HTCP) structure and evaluate the cooling effect of the structural layers and near-surface air. The HTCP consisted of coarse quartzite aggregates with high thermal conductivity instead of limestone. The HTCP and conventional asphalt pavement layers were placed in the environmental chamber. The incandescent lamp was used to simulate solar radiation to analyze the air temperature changes of the structural layers and near-surface air. The test results show that quartzite improves the thermal inertia of asphalt pavement layers. And the HTCP effectively transfers the heat accumulated in the upper layer and reduces the daily temperature of structure layers and near-surface air. However, HTCP releases more sensible heat at night, negatively impacting the urban heat island effect. This research contributes to the improvement of HTCP from an aggregate perspective and provides new ideas for mitigating the UHI effect.

Automated summary

This study proposes a new highly thermally conductive pavement structure and evaluates its cooling effect on the structural layers and near-surface air. Quartzite improves the thermal inertia of asphalt pavement layers, and the highly thermally conductive pavement effectively transfers accumulated heat in the upper layer, reducing temperatures in the structure layers and near-surface air.